Racine Trip

(Seth Posting)

I was able to take a trip through our local Case IH dealer to Racine, WI this past week. The trip included a tour of the plant where they make the Magnum series tractor and then a chartered fishing excursion on Lake Michigan.

They said no pictures allowed in the plant so I was able to snap a few from the seat of the bus. This is a picture of the front of the plant. Its the best I could do.

Several tractors sitting ready to be shipped. They make 50 a day of this series of tractor here that range from 150 hp to 290 hp. These tractors here are going to be shipped to Brazil and Europe. The demand has increased sharply so not all the parts are on some of the tractors, the suppliers for items that include mirrors, extra lights, can't keep up. The machines here are waiting for those parts before being shipped.

The New Holland blue tractors are built on the same line as the red ones. 75% that are built are red and 25% are blue. They consider them sister tractors, some parts are the same other areas of the tractors are totally different.

EPA requires ag tractors to meet tier 4 emission requirements. What is tier 4, in a nutshell the air coming out of the exhaust pipe is only oxygen and nitrogen. They claim that the air coming out is cleaner than the air going in. This is done by using DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) which is 32% nitrogen and 68% deionized water. DEF is injected into the exhaust system which neutralizes the exhaust gas (nitrogen oxide). So that's what they tell me. I am still trying to follow chemistry.

After the tour we got to got fishing on the lake. The weather was perfect!

This is the boat we fished from. The name was Get Reel II. I lost count how many poles were on the boat.

We were catching Salmon and lake trout. Pictured is one of my prized catch. Two guys run the boat, one drives the boat the other keeps track of the 8 to 10, 11, 12... poles we had in water as we trolled around. All I we had to do was reel them in.

Between the four of us from Osky we caught 17 fish all about this size.

We were headed in and on our way we had caught two at the same time. The driver left the wheel to help the guy in the back to make sure all the lines didn't get tangled. I thought I would help out and take the wheel. I was called everything from Captain Wannabe and Captain Crunch to a few other things I probably shouldn't mention on the family blog. I had a great time and thank the Osky Titan store for letting me go.